


Terminal March

by canadianwheatpirates



Series: Strange Voyage [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, PTSD, minor self-harm, shootweek19, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-14 17:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18952561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadianwheatpirates/pseuds/canadianwheatpirates
Summary: "Evidence this is a simulation: nothing concrete yet. That doesn’t mean anything, though; the simulations have been inching closer and closer to perfect."This is how Shaw comes home.





	1. Be like the river and cut through the stone

**Author's Note:**

> I hadn't seen a canon-compliant Shaw's Return fic, so I wrote one! Horizontal lines mark off canon scenes, so if you're really dedicated you can follow along with the show. Posting chapters every other day. Work title from the Darren Korb song, chapter title from the Devilskin song (that only exists as a cam on youtube #cri)

Shaw blinks awake. The lights in her cell are as bright and fluorescent as ever, and she sighs. Another day, another fucking simulation.

She shifts, and something in her bra pokes her. Frowning, she wonders what it is before she remembers: the wire she’d stripped out of the bedside lamp. It’s always been missing when she wakes up in a simulation. 

Evidence this is real: that. Evidence this is a simulation: nothing concrete yet. That doesn’t mean anything, though; the simulations have been inching closer and closer to perfect. Maybe they found the wire on her and wrote it in.

Hung jury.

Finally, her eyes are adjusted enough that she can open them properly. The room is as austere as ever: one camera in the corner, a pointless floor-to-ceiling mirror taking up one wall. She sits up, swinging her legs off the edge of the bed, then stands and pads into the bathroom.

There’s no camera in here, which is a major mistake on their part; Greer’s sensibilities must have outweighed his paranoia. She runs a finger along the join between the sink and the wall. It comes up covered in grey dust — another thing that hasn’t appeared in the simulations yet.

It won’t be long until they come to sedate her. Either they’ll be taking her to another set of simulations, or they’ll be keeping her under control; either way, sedatives make their lives easier.

She smiles to herself.

* * *

 

As soon as lock shorts out, she sprints for the bathroom. Alarms blare around her, but she ignores them; she’s done this — or something like this — thousands of times. The sink comes off the wall with a quick tug. She clambers in through the hole, then pauses. It’s probably Lambert on the way to deal with her, and while the thought of him running around inside the walls in his shitty suit makes her smirk, there might be a better way of dealing with him.

She reaches back through the opening and grabs the sink. Putting it back takes a certain amount of careful wiggling, but soon it slides back into place. There. No trace of where she went.

Turning away from her prison, she picks up the axe she’d stashed when she’d cut the hole. It’s not a gun, but it’ll do.

There’s only one way to go from here. She starts to crawl.

* * *

 

The maintenance duct branches in front of her, and she stops. Either direction could be the wrong one; there’s no way to tell without knowing the building’s layout.

She holds her breath and listens. Under the creak and hiss of the building’s pipes there’s another noise, sporadic, deep — and coming from up her left. She turns and follows it.

The sound starts to become clear as she crawls closer. A group of men yelling, possibly an argument or fight. The tunnel comes to an end with a wall, the voices hollering from the other side. It doesn't look very thick, and they'll be distracted by whatever’s already going on.

She gets up on her knees, braces, herself, and swings the axe.

* * *

 

“Okay, I’ve done shit like this before,” she says, more to herself than to the other man in the cell. It’s true; she’s spent plenty of time breaking into — and out of — prisons. “The guards don’t look like they’re paying much attention.”

“No,” the man says, “we’re all locked up.”

She smirks and taps the cell door. “These locks are big, and that makes them shitty. Got anything long and thin? Toothbrush’ll do.”

He rummages around and hands her a toothbrush. “What are you going to do?” he asks.

“You can open these locks if you can lever them hard with something thin,” she replies, jamming the toothbrush handle into the lock at an angle. “After that, I’m gonna sneak out and get low so they can’t see me. Once I’m in position, I need you to walk out and get their attention. They’ll come out to deal with you, I’ll knock them out, we book it. Think you can do that?”

He swallows nervously. “Yes.”

“Good.” She hands him the axe, grabs the toothbrush and yanks down as hard as she can. The plastic strains against the force, and she grunts; fuck she’s out of condition. She shifts her feet to a better brace position and tries again. Her shoulders ache. She snarls and gives it one last tug; the lock clunks, and the toothbrush snaps. 

“There,” she says, tossing the broken half aside. The man hands her the axe, wide-eyed. She slides the door open slowly, trying to minimise the noise, and drops into a crouch. Her bare feet are silent on the smooth floor; she sneaks over to the other side of the room and drops to one knee.

* * *

 

Alarms blare around her — at least this time the pitch is different.

Lambert's keys are cold in her fist, a small token of victory. She swings around a corner and comes face to face with a guard. Before he can react, she kicks him in the crotch; he makes a strangled noise and collapses.

Stripping off his uniform is quick work. It'll give her some camouflage, enough that by the time they realise she's not one of them she'll be gone. The pants and boots are both too big, but with some luck they'll get her out of here.

She trots further up the corridor, following the exit signs, trying to exude confidence and purpose. Samaritan may have fucked with her, but it can't take away her training.

A security checkpoint looms ahead, and she slows down to a walk. It’s staffed by two uniformed guards who look more alert than they've ever been in their lives. Talking is out of the question; her accent will give her away immediately. The ID she’d nicked off the guard has been getting her through the doors, but it won’t get her past this. Dammit.

Resigned, she pulls out her gun and fires. The first one slams back into his chair, screaming. She shoots the second and he falls to the ground, but on the way down his hand hits a button and another alarm joins the cacophony. Fuck. She ducks through the metal detector and breaks into a jog.

* * *

 

The cold wind is soothing, as is the chatter of the radio. She only half-listens as she drives, but picks up fragments anyway: it's October 2nd, the world is unstable as ever, Samartian hasn't killed or enslaved everyone yet. The details don't mean anything, of course — Samaritan could easily simulate some world news if it wanted — but it makes the world feel bigger.

A sign announces that she's entering Bloemfontein. The road behind her is empty, for now, but she should still ditch the Jeep soon. Plain clothes, food, and money are the next step; after that, she can look at getting out of here.

Houses start to appear along the highway, behind the high dirt sound barriers. She turns off the highway and into the city, occasionally taking random turns to confuse her route. When she's satisfied that she’s going to be difficult to find she pulls over and cuts the engine. She scrambles into the passenger seat, opens the glove box, and quietly blessed Lambert for being an idiot. He'd left his wallet inside; the credit card probably got cancelled the moment he bit the dust, but there's a handful of bank notes and — she squints a little — a receipt with a string of numbers scrawled on the back.

She shoves the cash and receipt into her bra. Money: solved. She pulls off the uniform shirt; it's a warm night, and better to not be in full uniform. She rolls down the window, jumps out, locks the car and throws the keys and gun back inside – carrying a gun is too much risk now and there might be a tracker on the keys. Even if there isn’t, she gets a kick out of being as much of an inconvenience as possible.

 

An hour later, panting hard, she comes to a stop outside a small inn. She’s miles from the car, which should buy her some time; they’ll have a wider area to search. She ducks inside, walks to the back and climbs up onto a bar stool; the mirror behind the bar gives her a view of most of the place, and there’s an exit nearby if she needs to bail. A set of stairs next to the end of the bar lead upward. Three men in suits sneer at her from a table behind her, then go back to talking quietly. The place is nice enough, wood paneled, busy but not overwhelming. In a way it’s nice to be around people again; she still doesn’t like them, but they don’t feel… engineered.

Everything in the simulations had been set with the goal of directing her towards The Machine. Yet here everyone seems to be just going about their night, paying her the barest bit of attention — if any at all.

Out of the corner of her eye, she notices the barman approaching and brings her focus back to the present. He gives her a long look, then asks “What can I get you?”

“Beer. Whatever’s on tap. Is your kitchen still open?”

“Yes.” He hands her a menu and she skims it as he draws her drink.

She hands over a note when he puts the glass down in front of her. As he fetches the change, the three men behind her stand up and, looking around in a way they seem to think is inconspicuous, slip through the door to the bathrooms. Odd.

“Can I get a steak?” she asks as the barman hands over her change.

“Of course.” He notes the order down on a scrap of paper. “How would you like it?”

“Medium rare.”

Keeping an ear on the noise of the bar, she sinks into thought as he walks off. Signs that this is real: the wire, the axe, being in fucking South Africa (?) and now this. She doesn’t want to believe it, can’t risk thinking this is real, but the evidence is starting to point that way. Each change in the simulations has been a small tweak, one variable at a time; Samartian is nothing if not methodical. Changing this much at once would be meaningless chaos, an outlier in its data.

Or maybe this is a simulation, and that’s what it wants her to believe.

She dismisses that line of thought with a firm shake of her head. Nothing good lies that way.

The men still haven’t come back from the bathroom. Suspicious. Possibly dangerous and worth investigating.

Take stock. Money: sorted, for now. Food: sorted. Clothes: still not ideal. She’ll need to get some civilian pants. The question of how to get the fuck out of South Africa is starting to loom. She can’t just waltz onto a plane; she’d at least need a passport and cash for a ticket, neither of which she can get without ingratiating herself to the local criminal network (possible, but time consuming). Even then, Samaritan has to be watching the airports. Travelling by sea would take too damn long, which leaves stowing away in a plane. But how?

The barman sets a plate down in front of her, and all her questions are swept away in favour of digging in. By her usual standards, the steak would be average at best; after eight months of prison food, she couldn’t ask for anything better. It even has garlic butter!

She chews, savouring the taste. There’s still a hell of a trip ahead, and once she’s back home she won’t even be able to get takeout without it sending Samaritan straight up her ass. She takes a swig of the beer; it’s a lager, light and dry. Not bad at all..

It’s almost a surprise that Samaritan hasn’t turned up yet. By now there should have been some crisis, something forcing her to move on; it rarely let her rest in the simulations. She either has no time, or, when left in her room for days on end, far too much of it.

The barman comes back over. “Everything alright?”

“The food? Yeah. Those three guys have been in your bathroom an awful long time though.” She jerks her head, indicating the vacant table. The barman’s eyes flick to the bathroom door, then away.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, either they’re having a threeway –” his fists clench “—or there’s something else in there.”

He places one hand on either side of her plate, palms flat on the bar, and says. “That’s none of your business.”

That means it’s criminal. Shaw looks up at him, then rams her steak knife into the bar between his right thumb and forefinger. The blade grazes the skin, close enough to scare but not to cut. He leaps back, gaze flicking to something under the bar, and she shakes her head.

“Look.” She counts out the cost of her bill and gently sets the cash on the bar. “Just tell me, and I’ll be out of your way.”

“It’s not safe.”

“ _ I’m _ not safe.”

They both look at the knife embedded in the bar. He deflates, and lowers his voice.

“It’s a criminal fighting ring. But don’t go down there – they’ll kill you!”

Shaw smirks, downs the last of the beer, and heads for the door. A dull roar greets her as she opens it; sure enough, a flight of stairs descends into near-darkness. She follows it down.

She can start to pick out some details as her eyes adjust. The lights are focused on a central cage where two shirtless men circle each other, trading blows. Around them the crowd cheers, pressed up against the mesh; the fighters disappear from sight as she reaches the floor. Off to one side she spots a table with a briefcase on it, flanked by two burly men. Prize money…

A guard stops her as she approaches the cage. The gun at his waist is poorly hidden. “You’re lost,” he says, and it’s not a question.

Shaw nods toward the ring. “I’m here to fight.”

“No.”

Her fist lashes out, catching him in the throat. He staggers back, choking, and a well-placed kick sends him to the ground. She grabs his gun and strips it as she strolls towards the cage.

The briefcase guards are clearly watching her, so she walks right over to them. Behind her the crowd explodes into jeers and hollers – one of the fighters must have been knocked out.

She raises her voice. “I want in.”

They look at each other, but before they can answer another man comes bounding past them. Unlike their uniform black, his suit is grey, and wide rings gleam on his fingers. The crowd parts for him as he bounces towards the ring.

“The Tank does it again!” he bellows, clapping the remaining fighter on the shoulder. “Can anyone beat him? I think not!”

Shaw sneers and pushes her way through the crowd. Another guard steps in front of her to stop her entering the ring; she grabs his outstretched hand and twists, using the torque to guide him to the floor. She steps past him into the ring and shouts “I bet I can!”

He laughs, and the crowd joins him. “You?” Still chuckling, he makes a sweeping gesture. “Should we let her try?”

A roar answers him, the closest people stomping their feet and rattling the cage mesh. She blocks them out and starts to examine her opponent. He has a foot on her, and a lot of muscle; he doesn’t look fast, though, from what she saw of the fight before. Looks like she’ll be playing keep-away.

The announcer gives an exaggerated shrug and heads for the cage door. He pauses beside her and says, “Your funeral.”

She takes a step back and shucks off her pants. The excess fabric is a hazard she can’t afford, even if several onlookers whistle at her for it. She kicks the pants aside and falls into a fighting stance.

The Tank advances on her, favouring his left side. She tenses. The cage is to small for her to duck around him without bringing herself into striking rage. He throws a jab that doesn’t quite reach her, finding his range, and she gets ready to spring.

He steps into his next punch and it would have landed if she wasn’t already diving under his arm, hitting the ground and rolling. The crowd boos and he spins around; she bounces to her feet and gives him a small shrug. This time he hangs back – clearly a quick learner. This fight has to end somehow, though, or they might both be going home empty handed.

Fuck it.

She charges. He brings his hands up to block but she springs sideways, bouncing off the mesh of the cage. Her fist lashes out and she catches him in the shoulder. He grunts, but that’s all. She whirls around again. Her arm catches his counterattack and she grabs his arm. Before he can react she yanks on it, sending her staggering past her. She dashes and leaps upward. Her arms wrap around his neck. Perfect. He shakes himself, trying to throw her loose, and she lets herself swing back and forth with it She digs her fingers into his eye and he yells, flailing at her hand; she uses the distraction to tighten her other arm around his neck. Only another couple of seconds. His hand grabs hers, but his grip is weak. He staggers and crashes to the ground.

Wincing, Shaw pulls her arm out from underneath him and picks herself up. “Well?” she calls.

The announcer leaps back into the ring. He slaps a grin on over his disappointment and bellows, “What a shock! Who knew one so small could be so powerful! We’ll be talking about this for years!” He beckons her towards the open cage door.

Shaw follows him out of the ring. The closest onlookers pat her on the back and hold their hands up for high fives, grinning; she considers breaking some fingers, but decides it’d create too much trouble. One of the guards hands her the briefcase, expression unchanged. The announcer beckons her off to the side.

“Who are you?” he asks once they’re far enough from the crowd.

“Nobody important,” she replies. A thought strikes her, and she adds, “I’m just passing though. You don’t know anybody who could get me to America without needing a passport…?”

He frowns his head. “Not America. Security is too tight. Are you sure you can’t pose as a passenger?”

“Yes. And I’ll take one of the Central countries if I have to.” Getting into America had been a long shot, but it would have been nice to cut the trip short.

“In that case, it depends what you’re offering.”

She holds up the briefcase and raises an eyebrow. He laughs.

“Of course. I’m sure I can find a shipment going out. It will be uncomfortable for you, of course.” He holds out a hand expectantly.

“I’ve had worse,” she quips, handing over the briefcase.

He leads her back to the stairs. “Stay in one of the upstairs rooms tonight.  Thato  — the  bartender — won’t bother you, I’ll make sure. My friends will collect you in the morning.”

“That’s quick.”

He smiles dryly and gestures upwards. She treks up the stairs, exhaustion finally hitting her as the last of the adrenaline runs out. Thato grinds to a halt when he sees her emerge.

“You…” he starts, but she waves him off.

“Some guy in a suit said I could have a room?”

“With the rings?” She nods, and he swallows. “Up the stairs, second on the left.”

She casts one last glance around the bar, making sure none of the remaining customers look too much like a Samaritan agent, then heads up the stairs. As promised, the room is empty – that doesn’t stop her searching it, and the adjoining bathroom, thoroughly before she sits down on the bed. The bedside table holds an alarm clock; she picks it up and fiddles with it until she thinks the alarm is set for 7:00am. Usually she’d wake up at 5:30 like clockwork, but hell knows what day cycle Samaritan had been keeping her on.

Wearily, she strips until she’s down to her underwear and singlet. She should shower, but that can wait until the morning. The bed is soft. She lies down, drags the duvet over herself and closes her eyes.

A sharp pain below her ear jerks her awake. She pulls her hand back; there are dark stains under the fingernails. Gingerly, she brushes the wound. It’s only grazed. There’s no cut, no scar – unless they caught her and the pain of the surgery pierced the simulation.

No. Pick the most likely explanation. There haven’t been any glitches or breaks yet. She’s just been worrying at the site. That’s all.

She gets up and pads to the bathroom, washes her hands with the gritty bar of soap on the sink. There’s a mirror above it, but she averts her gaze; she doesn’t need to know exactly how much she looks like shit. She soaks a washcloth with water and dabs at the wound. It stings, but quickly settles down.

Abandoning the washcloth in the sink, she wanders back into the bedroom. There’s nothing to do except wait. She sighs and climbs back into bed, rolling onto her front and pressing her face into the pillow.


	2. Another day above the ground

The alarm clock beeps at her persistently. She reaches out and pushes random buttons until it stops. Waking up is so much easier without a sedative hangover; she’d almost forgotten how it felt.

She sits up and stretches. A shower is definitely the next order of business. She sheds her clothes on the way; she’ll have to put them back on again after, which is less ideal than a fresh set, but at least she’ll get her skin clean. She turns on the shower, letting it warm up. The water pressure is as shit as she’d expected. She waits for a minute, then grabs the bar of soap and climbs in.

The water is hot, even if there isn’t much of it. She cranks the temperature up as far as it will go and scrubs herself down with the soap. As soon as she’s finishes she shuts off the water; there’s no point lingering. Again, she avoids her reflection as she dries off; she’s had enough of mirrors for the rest of her damn life. 

A knock rings through from the bedroom. “Hang on!” she calls. She gathers up her scattered clothes and drags them on. Shoving last of her cash back into her bra, she opens the door. 

Thato is on the other side. Wringing his hands, says, “He’s here for you. Please come down soon. He breaks things when he gets bored.”

She shrugs – it’s not like she has anything other than her clothes – and follows him down the stairs. The bar is empty, save for a man seated at one of the tables. A leather jacket is slung over the back of his chair. He gestures to the seat opposite, and she sits.

“Can I get breakfast?” she asks, the question addressed to both of them; there’s no point ordering if they’re about to leave.

“Sure,” the other man says in a voice rumblier than Reese’s, and the barkeep hurries off. He fixes his attention on Shaw. “So. Ndlovu tells me you need to be smuggled to the Americas.”

“That’s right. In a cargo hold.” She watches him carefully. He’s relaxed, obviously not expecting this to come to a fight; they’re more or less working together, after all, and he’s surely been warned about the stunt she pulled last night.

He shrugs. “We do what we have to. I can pack you in a suitcase, my friend will check you in as his luggage, and the recipients will get you through customs on the other side. Or they lose the shipment of drugs and you have to get yourself out.” He chuckles. “I can only promise you so much.”

“I know.” The barman trots up and puts a plate of fries down in front of her. She gives him a cursory nod, shoves a handful into her mouth, and adds, “How’re you gonna make sure I don’t suffocate?”

“I have a suitcase that isn’t airtight, and you should be able to open it a crack once it’s loaded on. We leave when you’re finished,” he adds, preempting her next question.

She’s not keen on being watched by a people smuggler while she eats, but she’s even less keen on doing a 14 hour flight on an empty stomach. The fries are reheated and a little gross.

Scooping the last of them up, she says, “Alright, let’s move.”

 

The drive is quiet, broken by occasional conversation between the smuggler and the woman in his passenger seat. They’d changed to a language she didn’t speak once they’d finished filling her in on the plan, so there’s no point trying to eavesdrop. The woman is small and softly-spoken ; it’s smart of him to use someone who looks unassuming for a job like this. He turns off the road to the airport and pulls the car over. “You need to get into the suitcase here,” he says. “There are cameras in the car park.”

“Will you be able to lift me?” she asks skeptically.

The woman waves a hand. “It has wheels. And I can always use men’s chivalry.” They climb out, and the smuggler unlocks the boot. Inside is the promised suitcase; it’s big enough for her, but she’ll have to curl up. Looks like it’s muscle cramp o’clock.

She climbs up into the boot and folds herself into the suitcase. The smuggler gives her one last apologetic look, then closes the lid and zips it shut, leaving her in total darkness. She evens out her breathing; conserving air is critical, and it’s hard not to feel like she’s back in captivity. Of course, this could all be a Samaritan ruse, but there’s nothing she can do about that until it happens.

The boot thuds closed, and a moment later the engine rumbles to life. She lurches slightly as the car accelerates and turns in a half-circle. Now she’s really on her way home.

 

Her suitcase bonks against one next to it as the plane takes off. It hits her already bruised leg and she winces. Baggage handlers are rough with luggage at the best of times, and it’s not like she could have asked them to be gentler.

She listens for a moment. When she’s sure the coast is clear she unzips the suitcase, rolling out of it onto the floor. She stretches out her legs and just lies there. Twenty-three hours to kill – with a connection in the middle of it, which means even more time spent in the suitcase. Awesome.

She picks herself up and starts to move through a series of stretches, trying to work out some of the stiffness in her muscles. Searching all the luggage will take up a good couple hours, and she should also sleep before they land; it’s going to be daylight again when they arrive.

A thought strikes her, and she fishes the receipt out of her bra. The numbers scribbled on the back look random, but Lambert wouldn’t’ve been hanging on to it if they weren’t important – and something he couldn’t trust himself to remember. That doesn’t really narrow down the possibilities, though. She frowns, reads them over a few times to make sure she’s committed them to memory, and shoves the receipt back with the cash.

She looks up and down the cargo hold. There must be a pair of pants that fit her in here somewhere.

 

Her search not only turns a pair of comfortable jeans, but a few other good pieces: a Swiss army knife, clean underwear, even a pair of boots that fit.

She sits, leaning back against a support pillar, and faces the question she’s been avoiding so far: what the hell is she going to do when she gets back? Returning to New York makes sense; it’s Samaritan’s hub and gives her the best chance of taking it down. A tiny part of her hopes that she’ll run into Root, but she quickly crushes it. She can’t afford to put Root at risk like that.

Still, she needs more of a plan than ‘kick Samartian’s ass’. Kicking Greer’s ass is a slightly better goal, but still a long way off yet. In a perfect world, she’d pick off Samaritan agents to help the rest of the team do… whatever it is they need to do to win. It’s been a long damn time though, and while she knows Root is alive nothing else is certain; it’s wisest to assume the others are dead and proceed accordingly.

Avoiding detection will be a problem. The shadow map – if it’s still accurate – isn’t big enough to get around by, and with the kind of access Samartian has it’s only a matter of time before her face is caught on a dashcam, or a phone, or one of the other million ways the city is surveilled. She might be able to slip past wearing a ski mask, but even that draws attention.

That’s another thing the simulations had always fucked up on purpose; they’d let her run around the city much too freely, all in the hope that she’d lead them back to the s– to The Machine.

Don’t think of a polar bear. It was the first thing they learned in counter-interrogation: the easiest way to avoid giving up information is to focus on something else entirely. Even now, no matter how real this seems, she can’t think about The Machine; every time her thoughts come close, they skitter away again.

She exhales. Plan. Using the subway for travel is right out. The streets are bad but not impossible… The rooftops might be safe, or at least safer. Obviously they’re still watched, but there will be more gaps in the coverage and getting people up there to chase her will be a pain in their ass. She files the thought away; cross-Manhattan parkour doesn’t sound like a good general mode of travel, but it might work in an emergency.

She frowns. Her attacks on Samaritan will be dictated by the kind of information she can find when she gets there; no point worrying until then. She can procure guns and explosives with little trouble, though finding somewhere to stash them might be an issue. Of course, most criminals will hang on to anything for the right price.

She closes her eyes and lets herself drift off, thoughts and possibilities still rattling around the back of her mind.

 

The plane thumps down onto the ground and she startles awake. She flicks open the Swiss army knife and has it up in front of her before she realizes where she is – in exactly the same place as before. No glitches. No phantom pain. Fuck.

Panting, she folds the knife shut and pockets it. Her right hand comes to the spot under her ear; it’s still a little raw from the scratching, but not wounded, not implanted. She focuses inward, slowing down her breathing. The plane has landed. Time to get back in the suitcase. No fucking around.

She stuffs her old clothes and the rum into a random duffel bag and climbs back into the suitcase. Zipping it shut from the inside takes serious toe dexterity and wiggling around, but soon she’s encased in darkness again. The baggage handlers had better get here quickly.

 

Emerging from the suitcase a second time feels like a simulation, repeating the same situation over and over again. She stares around, picking out the small details. All of them could be faked, of course, but it gives her something to hang on to.

The suitcases next to her are new, and one of them is unlocked (stupid, in this day and age, but fortunate). She pries it open and grins. The clothing is all men’s, too big for her, but a bottle of rum sits nestled in among them. She picks it up, cracks the seal, takes a swig, and continues down the cargo hold.

 

The rest of the search doesn’t turn up much, though she’s suitably buzzed by the end of it. She’d found a new singlet, and a pink long sleeved shirt to layer over it – keeping the sun off her is going to be important for the journey ahead.

Fuck, she misses Root. She sits down on the floor and takes another drink of rum. In captivity, she couldn’t acknowledge it, couldn’t dare admit that she cared – beyond what they’d figured out from her responses in the simulations – but she does, and she hates it. Or, not quite hates; there’s a defensive anger, the part of her that says that she doesn’t do feelings railing against her.

She wants to thump the floor, but restrains herself. It’s not worth risking discovery. She settles for gritting her teeth. Root was smart as hell, but sometimes she could be fucking dense; she’s still a little amused that it took kissing her and locking her in an elevator for Root to finally get it. She misses the quiet mornings of days off with Root, misses getting drunk and watching bad action movies, hell, misses coming home to find computer parts scattered across her apartment and Root passed out on the couch.

Samaritan had used that all against her. It had obviously put more effort into getting her right than the others; it had written Reese off as quiet, and Finch as, somehow, even more of a dick than he actually was. But Root… it had come close, once or twice. She's going to make it pay. For  _ everything.  
_

 

Baggage claim is somehow worse than being loaded on. The carousels always looked fun when you were a kid, but circling around and around has its limits – especially when you’re trapped in a suitcase. Someone picks her up, swearing, and dumps her suitcase on a trolley; she must be the last one, because they immediately start wheeling it away.

From the sound of them the recipients are the woman from before, and a man (almost certainly working for a larger cartel), both well practiced in the art of idle airport chatter. There’s a lurch as she’s loaded into a trunk again.

She sighs, and starts to count through the bones of the human body to kill time.

 

“You can come out now,” the woman says. Shaw warily unzips the suitcase and sits up, unable to hide the relief at being able to move her cramping muscles.

“Thank fuck,” she says, addressing them both in Spanish. “Would not recommend that as a travel method.”

The man tries to hide a smirk.

“I assume I can go?”

The woman shrugs and gestures to the door. It opens onto a staircase, which leads up to the street. The sun makes her squint, unbearably bright after so long spent in darkness.

She sets off up the road. Ultimately she has to strike out north, out of the city and towards the border, but first she needs money and a ride. The first one is easily solved — she’s a good pickpocket — and having money will mean she can travel.

The street starts to get more crowded, which tells her that she’s going in the right direction. She lets her feet carry her onwards into the center of town.

 

A motorcyclist pulls up next to her. She falls into a defensive stance, ready to take down the operative who’s found her, but he ignores her and takes off his helmet.

Well, never turn down an opportunity. She walks up to him as he dismounts and bumps into him, using the movement to swipe his keys and wallet. He curses at her, and she shrinks inwards as she apologises; the easiest way to avoid a fight is to look to small to be a threat. He huffs and walks off.

Once he’s out of sight, she swings herself up onto the bike. It’s a little rusty, but it starts fine; anything is better than walking. 

 

She weaves along the highway, grateful for the agility of the bike. Getting stuck in traffic when Samaritan might be on her ass is  _ not _ her idea of a good time. 

The road curves north, and she follows it. Her exact route doesn’t matter as long as she makes it to the border, and she knows enough about the geography of Mexico that she can’t go too far wrong. Fuck it’s nice to feel like she’s moving again; even if it’s slower, the visceral speed of being on a bike feels like  _ progress. _

Of course the fucking bike breaks down. She drags it onto the shoulder, cursing. The fuel tank looks okay, but the engine sputters and dies when she turns the keys. Fuck.

She gives it one last check over, then gives up. It clatters as she drops it.

Out of other options, she starts to walk.

 

She’s debating taking off a layer – the day is getting hot, but protection from the sun is important – when the truck that had just driven past her rolls to a stop. The cab opens, and a man climbs down from it; he’s middle aged, short, his mustache flecked with grey.

“Why are you walking out here? And alone!” he calls to her.

“Bad luck!” she replies.

He hurries over to her. His gait doesn’t look like he’s carrying a weapon. “Let me give you a ride! The next city is miles away!”

She stops and considers the offer. Transport of any kind would be great right now, but there’s always the chance it’s a trap. Still, she can probably take him if it comes to that.

The chance to sit down wins out. “I’m going north.”

He waves a hand. “That’s fine! I’m going as far as Chihuahua.” She follows him back to the truck and swings herself up into the passenger seat. He doesn’t try to say anything further, and she appreciates it.

 

“There’s a stop up ahead that I usually rest at,” the driver says to her. The question is implied, and she shrugs in response. She’s lucky to have a lift at all; it doesn’t matter if it takes another hour to get to Chihuahua.

She turns her attention back to the road. It’s been dark for a couple of hours now, and all she can see is the stretch illuminated by the truck’s headlights. The stop comes into view not much later; it’s no different to the other ones she’s passed in her life, though of course some of the fine details like language and food will be different.

They park, jump down out of the cab and head inside. There’s the usual assortment of haggard-looking truckers, not a threat; two men are talking quietly in the corner, and she focuses on their conversation as she buys a burrito and a cup of shitty coffee.

“You know we’re not gonna make it on time,” the bigger one says as she sits down at a table, carefully facing away from them.

“Of course we’re not,” the smaller one hisses, “that’s the fucking point! We don’t have to worry about looking after them when we get across the border, and we get their money.”

That makes her frown. They’re obviously smuggling some people, though their customers clearly picked a bad crew. Still, you can’t hold it against civilians; it’s not like there’s a travel agency for illegal border crossings.

She sips her coffee. The truck driver from earlier comes and sits across from her, giving her a nod.

“I’m going to be stopping for the night in a couple of hours,” he tells her.

“That’s fine. I think I just found another ride out of here,” she replies.

He smiles sadly. “Stay safe.”

They fall into silence. She takes another sip of the bad, bad coffee and tucks into the burrito. It’s as good as one could ask from a truck stop; the grease is oddly welcome at the end of such a long day.

The most dangerous part of this trip is immediately after crossing the border. She’ll be alone, unresourced and unarmed in Samartian territory, and her first cache is at least ten hours away by car. It won't know she's back until she's caught on a camera or mic — her free hand rubs the skin under her ear, the smoothness reminding her that they can't track her — but the second she does it'll come down on her like a ton of bricks. Martine is still out there, and she’s a threat; unlike Lambert, she was competent to track her down once already.

A chair scrapes behind her. She counts down from ten and gets up, gives the truck driver a parting nod, and follows the men out to the parking lot. They’re headed for a truck, the back of which is stacked with boxes and covered with a tarp – perfect for hiding people in.

“Hey!” she calls, jogging up behind them, still carrying the half-eaten burrito.

They whirl around. “What do you want?” snaps the smaller one.

Shaw lowers her voice and deliberately worsens her pronunciation. “I heard you mention the border. With America, yes? I got stranded here and I want to get home.”

He waves a dismissive hand. “Go to the embassy.”

“My husband took all our money and papers when he abandoned me.” Her lower lip wobbles slightly. “Please. I can pay once I get there. I'll have money.” Offering cash up front would have a better chance of success, but being broke at least fits her persona.

The bigger one looks her up and down, obviously sizing her up (and coming to the wrong conclusion). He shares a look with the other man. “Get in,” he says.

“Thank you, thank you so much, oh my god,” she says as she climbs up onto the truck bed.

“Stay quiet and out of sight,” the smaller one snaps.

She ducks under the tarp, finds the cleanest corner, and settles down. The truck doors thump shut, and everything falls still; they must be waiting for the last of the passengers. Sure enough, three more people shortly scramble aboard – a man, woman and child. Almost certainly a family. Poor idiots. The child points to her and she nods to the family, hoping to forestall conversation.

“Who are you?” the man asks.

“Just another traveller,” she replies with genuine disinterest.

They arrange themselves among the boxes, and the truck starts with a splutter. She closes her eyes and lets herself fall into a light sleep.


	3. No direction but to follow what you know

She snaps awake to find the girl sitting across from her.

“What?” she grumbles.

“You looked like you were having bad dreams.”

She slows down her breathing, pushing the images — the memories — of murder out of her mind. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

“Look, kid,” she snaps. The father glares at her and she softens her voice. “I don’t want to talk about it, but I promise I’m not dangerous to you. Okay?”

The girl nods.

“Good. Now I’m gonna go back to sleep.”

* * *

 

Trekking across the desert is, at least, better than most other terrain she’s had to cross on foot. The jungle is full of hidden surprises, and anything with snow saps your energy without you noticing until you collapse into a snowbank with exhaustion. By contrast, the desert is honest; it’s dry, flat, hot, and aside from the occasional buried scorpion it makes it clear that it wants to kill you. She can respect that.

She stoops down and refills her water bottle from a cache. The border must be behind her now; the sun is beginning to slide west, and she’s been keeping up a good pace. Given the direction she crossed it in, she’s most likely in Texas. That’s not the worst; while it’s further from New York than she’d hoped, it gives her a good chance to get armed before she gets there.

 

At last, she comes to a road. It looks like an interstate; that means a good chance of someone who’ll pick up hitchhikers.

She strikes out east.

Before long the sad, flaking sign of a gas station comes into view. As she comes closer she can see that it’s open; that means it’s staffed, which means she can steal a car. She could just hotwire it, but that’s shit for a quick getaway – a capability she’ll need if Samaritan cottons on to her.

She pulls her hat down lower over he face. If she can avoid getting caught by the cameras and saying anything, she has a chance; Samaritan won’t be able to prove the robbery was her and not some other five-foot-two brown woman, though it might send people to check anyway.

The door jangles as she opens it. She walks straight up to the counter, careful to look only at the floor.

“Can I help you?” asks the clerk. Her fist lashes out in a deliberately sloppy right hook and he crumples. She darts around the counter and rifles through his pockets, finding his car keys and wallet. On her way out she grabs a handful of protein bars, a bottle of water, and a map.

There’s only one car in the parking lot out back – a beaten-up looking truck. Makes sense; it’s the most versatile thing you’d be able to get out here for cheap. It beeps when she presses the button on his key fob. She yanks the door open, throws the protein bars into the passgenger seat, and starts it up. The gas tank is full – must be one of the perks of the job – and she pulls out of the carpark.

There’s no way of knowing if Samaritan has seen her yet, if it’s sending goons to kill her right this second.

May as well keep heading east.

 

There’s been no sign of Samartian yet, which either means that it hasn’t noticed her or its operatives were too far away to respond. If she’s really lucked out they’ll be coming from the west and she’ll have been driving away from them.

Fuck, she’s tired. Hardly surprising; she’s been fucking around with time zones, and it’s nearly midnight. Checking in at a motel is too dangerous, but so is sleeping by the roadside; that’s just asking to get picked up, if not by Samaritan than by overeager cops. She hauls on the steering wheel and turns off the road, barging through a fence into an empty field. Getting out of sight of the road is the best compromise she’s going to manage.

Once the interstate has disappeared from the rear-view, she cuts the engine. Crawling into the back seat is all she can manage; she curls up, keys clutched in her fist, and passes out.

The blinding sun wakes her up. She blinks as her eyes adjust and she gets her bearings; she’s still in the field, apparently undisturbed. Her fingers brush against her neck. Scabs, but no scar.

She scrambles back into the driver’s seat, grabs a protein bar and tears the wrapper open while she starts the engine. On a whim, she switches on the radio and turns the dial until she finds what sounds like a news station. The presenter works his way through the normal crime sprees and local political scandals – nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, there wouldn’t be; Samaritan would scrub the news of any trace of itself. Apparently the weirdness hasn’t reached critical mass yet.

The radio crackles with static as she drives back towards the interstate, blips of it interrupting the broadcast. She grumbles under her breath and fiddles with the dial a little more.

 

The sun is high overhead when she turns onto a side road. There are two caches she needs to pick up before she gets to New York, in order to be armed enough to take on Samaritan, and this will take her to one of them. She makes several more turns that take her onto winding dirt back roads, and eventually stops outside a farmhouse. An old man comes out to investigate the noise, shotgun raised; she gets out of the truck and puts her hands up.

“Rick!” she calls to him. “It’s been a while.”

He laughs and lowers the shotgun. “Sameen! What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” she replies, walking up to him. He’s an old military friend of her father’s, one of the ones who promised to help keep an eye on her after he died. He’s also a luddite who refuses to own technology newer than a landline phone, which makes his farm the perfect place to hide gear from Samaritan. “Can I borrow a shovel?”

“Time to dig up your bug-out box huh? Sure, there’s one out back.”

She follows him around behind the house and takes the shovel he offers. Without waiting for him to follow, she strikes out into a nearby field. Partway across it, a rock sticks out of the ground; she steps up onto it, angles herself towards the right-hand corner of the paddock, and takes some carefully measured steps. At seventeen she stops walking and starts to dig.

Three feet down, the shovel hits metal. She digs out the dirt from around the safe deposit box and yanks it free. Setting it down beside her, she fills in the hole; there’s no need to go leaving Rick’s farm all dug up.

“You found it!” he says as she approaches the house.

“Yup.” She hands over the shovel. “Rick, listen. I’ve got some fucking bad people after me, and they might track back and find you too. Just be careful, okay?”

He nods and smirks. “You know I can look after myself, same as I know that about you. Drop by again if you get out of the shit.”

“Will do.” She hops back up into the truck, dropping the safe deposit box onto the seat beside the protein bars. He waves as she drives away; she rolls down the window and throws him a parting salute.

 

It’s an hour before she has space to pull over, but she finally stops in a dingy truck layby. The deposit box isn’t locked, since she figured she wouldn’t be able to get the keys in an emergency. She opens the lid and sorts through the contents: a USP compact, three magazines of ammo, two grand in cash, a tin of army-grade camouflage face paint, and a stack of driver’s licenses and passports. The photos won’t stand up to facial recognition or anything electronic, but they’re enough to get her out of trouble with the cops.

She loads the gun and tucks it into her waistband. Fuck it’s good to be armed again; Samaritan is going to get a hell of a shock if it comes after her now. She wiggles the rear-view mirror until she’s reflected it and opens the tin of camouflage paint. With a few carefully-placed smears, she’ll scramble Samaritan’s facial recognition. It may be an artificial superintelligence, but even it has limits.

Satisfied with the paint she shuts the tin, grabs some of the cash, and climbs out of the truck. Her bottle of water ran out on the way to Rick’s and she’s gonna need to lay in supplies for the rest of the trip to New York. 

This gas station is major enough to warrant an ATM (probably to help people buy drugs) and a payphone out the front. The cash machine beeps as she walks past it and spits out a handful of bills. She frowns as she walks up to it, takes the cash, and heads inside.

A bell rings as she enters; it draws a few glances, but no serious attention. She darts around, grabbing water, red bull, skittles, and a bag of potato chips. The clerk frowns at her when she dumps her groceries on the counter. She glares back at him and he cowers, scanning the items and taking the cash she hands over without a word. He passes her the bag and a few coins. She nods, and makes for the exit. 

She glances at the ATM again as she steps outside. That was fucking weird, but a good kind of weird. Maybe The Machine is trying to help.

She frowns. The Machine probably wants her to meet back up with the team. It won’t know what’s happened to her — won’t know how much of a danger she is. She picks up the payphone, feeds the coins into it, and punches in a number. Any will do; it’s not like she’s trying to talk to a person.

It rings twice, and then picks up. She ignores the person on the other end and says, “Don’t tell the others I’m coming back.” 

“Who is—” She hangs up. The call will tell Samaritan where she is, but that’s an acceptable risk; she’ll avoid the highways for the next few hours, and hopefully they’ll be too busy searching the local area to realise she’s long gone. She sets her jaw and heads back to her truck.

 

The radio crackles with static again as she crosses into Kentucky. She reaches for it, but then pauses; like that first night, it’s a pattern of short bursts – not random, like normal static. She pulls over onto the shoulder of the road and listens closely. It stops for a moment, and then picks up again; she counts the blips, and – it’s Morse code.

She reaches over and yanks open the glove box, groping around in it until she finds a pen. Scribbling down the letters gives her a string of gibberish. She frowns. Assuming it’s Samaritan – she can’t think of any other agencies who might communicate like this – there must be more to it. Wait, Lambert also had an incomprehensible string of numbers. She writes his code down, and the regular alphabet beside it. She snorts. Leave it up to Lambert to be the dumbass who writes down his cypher key.

The message starts to take shape as picks apart the cyphers. RETURN NYC 36HRS MEET 15 CENTRAL PARK WEST PARKING LOT.

36 hours is just enough time to get ready to strike. She grins. Finally, an objective.

The same black Escalade has been behind her for three hours. She glances at it in the rear view. It could be a coincidence, but she doubts it.

She turns onto the I-40 and it follows. Even if it’s Samaritan, they’re not actually a threat until they start shooting or try and jump her; still, she needs to shake them soon. This truck will almost certainly have been reported stolen by now, and they will have put that together with the call from the gas station. She definitely needs to change cars before she gets to New York.

There’s always the option of stopping and letting them try and jump her, but that’s her last choice. Hell knows how many operatives are behind those tinted windows, and if it comes to a standoff they’ll definitely have more ammo than her.

She takes the exit onto Sycamore View Road, watching the Escalade carefully. It goes right past the turn-off without hesitating. She breathes a sigh of relief, then punches herself in the leg; she needs to get a grip. Even if it was Samaritan, they can’t recognise her from behind and her face paint will scramble the traffic cameras. Her hand goes to the skin under her ear. As always, it finds nothing.

She shakes her head and keeps driving.

 

She barely pauses for dinner, picking up a shitty burrito from another gas station as she floors it towards her next destination. New York is still another day’s driving away, but her second cache is close enough that she can reach it before she has to sleep again.

Not for the first time, she’s grateful the ISA trained her to handle long road trips. A significant test of every recruit was being dropped off in the middle of nowhere with no supplies; she’d aced it, mostly because boredom doesn’t come naturally to her. This is no different.

As she drives, she considers New York. There will be at least one Samaritan agent arriving back at the same time as her; she’ll have to be ready at all times in case they cross paths. By now, it’s likely the city will be swarming with them anyway. Fortunately she has the element of surprise on her side; it doesn’t know she knows its plan, so it won’t be expecting her to attack.

Her first priority is some darker clothes. She needs to be able to move easily, and pink shows up too much at night. While sniping would normally feel safer, she needs to be able to bail at a moment’s notice; the upshot of that is that she doesn’t need any weapons beyond her Compact. And maybe some grenades. She can figure out shelter between getting back and attacking Samaritan tomorrow night.

She turns right, hard – in the dark, she’d almost missed the exit. The side road leads to a dilapidated church, overgrown with weeds, the front doors hanging open as though they’d been smashed in. Of course, that’s why she’d picked it; the locals think it’s haunted. In fairness, the shadows her headlights cast would be enough to spook anyone capable of being spooked.

She hops out of the car, leaving on the headlights. Inside, the church smells like dust and rot. The pews were long ago pushed to the side, leaving the floor clear; there’s a large chalk pentagram sketched near the middle, and she chuckles. Leave it up to the local kids to add some extra horror to the place. She walks over to the far corner, finding the floorboard that wobbles under her steps. Kneeling down, she presses on the other end of it, grabs the portion that lifts up, and heaves. The floorboard comes away with a shower of dust and woodlice, revealing another safe deposit box. She reaches down, grabs it, and trots back to the car.

The radio announces midnight as she climbs back into the truck. She may as well sleep here; it’s not likely Samaritan will check a derelict church, and if a crew of teens disturb her she can always pretend to be a vampire or something.

She climbs over into the back and lies down on her front, stretching some of the stiffness out of her back. If she makes good time tomorrow, she’ll get into the city before dark.


	4. Is that an autumn leaf falling, or is that you walking home?

She bolts upright, hand going to her gun. After a moment, the sound comes again: a rooster’s crowing. She grumbles and climbs back into the driver’s seat. Her face paint has smudged in her sleep; she grabs the tin and reapplies it before starting the engine.

 

Swapping cars is more difficult now that she isn’t in the middle of nowhere; she’s more likely to get caught on camera, and the response time is going to be shorter. She pulls over and packs everything up into the safe deposit boxes, plans her hat firmly on her head, and turns on her hazard lights. She climbs out of the truck and opens the hood. Now all she needs is for someone to decide to help.

A couple of cars whip by, but sure enough it’s not even ten minutes before one pulls up. A broad, bearded white guy hops out. “You look like you could use a hand, little lady!”

She smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “Yeah, my truck just – ” she waves a hand at the engine “– backfired and died!”

He comes around to stand beside her, far too close to be comfortable. “That could be any number of things. Tell me more about what happened?”

“Well,” Shaw begins, then slams a fist into his jaw. He topples over. She quickly frisks him, but finds nothing; the idiot must have left his keys in the car. She drags him out of sight of the road, grabs the safe deposit boxes, and trots over to his car. Sure enough, the keys are still in the ignition. She dumps the boxes on the passenger seat and shuts the door.

 

There’s no good direction to enter New York City from. Samaritan will be watching them all anyway, so she cuts through the Holland Tunnel in the name of speed. She chews on another protein bar as she drives. New York is familiar and different all at once; a lot changes in eight months, but the rhythm of the city is the same.

Brooklyn has the most shadow zones, assuming Samartian hasn’t expanded any further – not a safe bet. She’ll ditch the car in one of them and hole up in another.

She smiles smiles a little to herself as she winds her way through Manhattan. It’s good to be back.

 

She makes good time, parking in a Brooklyn shadow zone less than an hour after arriving in the city. Sorting through her things doesn’t take long; everything except the guns and cash will be useless from here on out. She tucks her Compact into her pants and her Nano into the top of her boot, hops out of the car, throws the keys back inside and slams the door. Never miss an opportunity to be inconvenient.

She constantly checks for signs of pursuit as she crosses Samaritan territory, using shop windows to look behind her without being suspicious. Every time a car passes, she looks away; while jumping her in broad daylight wouldn’t be optimal for them, they can always just spin it as another Federal thing.

A man in a sharp black suit approaches her. She fights not to respond, as much as she wants to grab her gun and shoot him in self defense. He shoulder checks her on the way past and grunts with irritation. She exhales, then bushes her free hand over her shoulder; he doesn’t appear to have left any bugs. Fuck, the sooner she can get into a shadow zone the better.

 

The constant-seeming presence of security cameras starts to wane after another hour’s walk. Soon, they disappear completely. She starts to relax and take more notice of the area; it’s mostly residential, but there’s a hotel on the corner.

She steps inside and glances around the lobby – no cameras. It’s shabby, exactly the kind of out-of-the-way place she needs, and she can handle any of the risks that come with staying in a place like this (except maybe the bed bugs).

She walks up to the counter. The clerk, visibly annoyed at being interrupted from his magazine, snaps “What do you want?”

“A room.” She says. “And I’ll pay extra to help you forget me.”

“Sure. Two hundred. Pay again tomorrow if you’re still here.”

She hands over a stack of bills and he tosses a key across the counter. She grabs it and trots up the stairs to the second floor, then wanders along the landing until she finds the room. The door creaks as it opens, revealing a sparsely furnished interior; the walls are water-stained, the bed has holes in the comforter, and the only other furniture is a single chair. She shuts the door behind her and locks it before crossing the room and opening the door that, hopefully, leads to the bathroom. 

The bathroom have concerning streaks of mould running up them. She tries to turn the shower on; it gurgles, but no water comes out. The basin is cracked, but the taps work, and she scrubs off the camouflage face paint.

She glances up and catches sight of herself in the mirror. As expected, she looks as exhausted as anyone who’d crossed the country in under 36 hours. She shakes her head and heads back into the bedroom. For lack of anything else to do, she decides to head back out; she still needs new clothes, and stores will start closing soon.

 

She finds a Salvation Army thrift store about twenty minutes’ walk away from the hotel. The idea of giving them money leaves a bad taste in her mouth, but she can always rob one of their collectors at Christmas or something to balance things out. As always, she circles around the back of the building, finds the cable box, and cuts the power to the cameras; being caught by Samaritan now would just be embarrassing.

The bell jangles as she walks in the front door. She spies the womens’ section and vanishes into it before any old Christian ladies can ask if she needs something. She pulls a grey hoodie off the rack, casts a critical eye over it, then throws it over her arm. 

A sweep of the section turns up a pair of black pants and a red t-shirt that, while too bright for night camouflage, at least fits; she’ll be wearing the hoodie over it anyway, since it’s the bitter end of fall.

“Find everything you need?” asks an old Christian lady as she puts the clothes down on the counter. 

“Yes,” she replies as she hands over a ten-dollar bill. The woman reaches for the till, and she scoops up the clothes. “Keep the change,” she adds.

 

She doesn’t bother trying to shower when she gets back to the hotel, just strips and falls onto the bed. It’s still too early to eat, and she doesn’t want to move around too much; all there is to do is rest and wait.

 

It’s dark when she wakes up, and she curses; while it’s unlikely that she slept long enough to miss the meeting, she shouldn’t’ve risked it. She pulls on her new clothes, packs her guns and cash, and dashes out of the hotel. 

The street outside is quiet, but not completely deserted, which tells her it’s only a couple of hours after dark at most. She trots down it, waiting for it to clear; a car theft probably wouldn’t attract that much attention, but alerting Samaritan to the shadow zones will only hinder her. 

A pair of headlights flash as she reaches the corner. The car is new-looking, and unoccupied. She tries the door and finds it unlocked; The Machine must have hacked it for her. She gets in and pushes the ignition button — fuck she hates cars without keys — and it starts. Nonplussed, she pulls away from the curb.

 

She ditches the car a few blocks from Central Park. It’ll definitely be trackable; putting some distance between it and her is just good sense. The cover of darkness should help break up her trail, since facial recognition is harder at night. 

There’s still a ton of time — she’d checked the clock in the car, and it’s barely 10pm — and she’s starving. She passes a convenience store and stops, weighs her options, then ducks inside. She grabs a red bull and a sandwich from the fridges, tosses a ten dollar bill on the counter and is out the door without a word. 

The clerk must have better things to do than chase down a technically-paying customer, since she’s undisturbed as she drops the sandwich packaging in the trash and takes a bite. She sets off up the road, heading away from the meeting point; she’ll loop back around to it eventually, but first: sandwich.

 

It’s another two hours before she finally reaches the meeting point, a parking lot near Central Park. Nobody else is there yet — won’t be for a while — so she trots into it and has a look around. 

The lot is out the back of a brick building, a radio mast rearing up over it. That’s probably what Samaritan is here for; if it’s communicating by radio, it’ll want to expand its reach as far as possible. 

She finds a nearby bush and climbs into it. Here she’s close enough to know when Samaritan’s goons have arrived, but practically invisible when she keeps still. Brushing branches away from her face, she settles in to wait.

 

Her leg starts to cramp. Fuck, she’s been staying still way too much these last few days. She slowly reaches down and starts to massage the aching muscle.

The sound of voices grabs her attention. Squinting through the leaves, she sees a man walk up to the radio tower; it must be time.

She draws her gun and sneaks out of the bush. The man is joined by two others, and she fires. He drops. The others scatter; one of them runs around the side of the building. She gives chase. 

He ducks out onto the sidewalk, glances back at her, then sprints out across the road. Central Park is on the other side; she barely glimpses him scrambling over the wall before a taxi rushes past, honking at her in irritation. She flips it off and dashes across the road, determined not to lose him. She holsters her gun and flings herself at the wall. 

Her momentum carries her up over the wall easily, and she lands among the trees with a crunch. There’s no sign of the agent. She presses deeper into the trees, treading carefully to minimise noise. If she’s right, there should be a path near here; he’ll be headed for it so that he can get out. 

She spots him quickly, his black suit a patch of deeper darkness, and draws her gun. The Samaritan agent is is distracted, aiming his gun at someone else. She shoots him and ducks into the nearby trees, sprinting in the direction he’d been aiming. The outline of a person solidifies against the dark. She slams into the stranger, knocking them down and pinning them before they can react. A familiar face stares up at her, and no — it can’t be —

“Root?”

“Shaw.”

* * *

 

No. No no no no no no no no. This isn’t how this goes. The memory of seven thousand bullets tearing through her skull overwhelms her, and she closes her eyes against the phantom pain.

Root is still there when she opens them again, staring her down. She takes a deep breath and forces herself to think. This  _ isn’t _ how this goes; the simulations always had always had flaws, tells, idiosyncrasies, but this seems like more of a Root move than Samaritan could ever predict.

How the fuck did Root find her? This can’t be a coincidence, but she asked The Machine not to tell them. Her grip tightens on her gun. Maybe it is a simulation; maybe Samaritan sent a copy of Root to lure her back onto the path it needs her to follow.

The path. Her path has been so different this time. Why would it waste so much time having her get back from a jail on another continent? That was new. And letting her get to her caches doesn’t make sense either; the more secure she is, the less likely she is to need to find the rest of the team. 

Like hell Samaritan has changed the simulation this much  _ and _ decided to fuck with its simulation of Root as well.

Wait — Root mentioned the subway. She’d panicked at first, but Root has never mentioned the subway in the other simulations. That means that either the subway is compromised (or about to be) — in which case, why bother continuing with the simulations? — or this is real.

This is real.

Shaking, she lowers her gun. This is real. Root holsters her gun in one swift moment and flings herself at Shaw, wrapping her in another tight hug. 

“I’m not going back to the subway,” Shaw says, her voice cracking. “I’ll go with you, but not there.”

“Okay,” Root whispers. She presses a kiss to Shaw’s hair. Shaw doesn’t really know what to do with that, but she grabs the back of Root’s jacket and returns the hug. Root is also shaking, the two of them clinging to each other like they’re the only people in the world.

Eventually Root breaks away from her, though she still stands close. Blinking back tears, she says, “We need to get you somewhere safe.”

“I have a shitty hotel room, but I stole a car near it to get here, so it’s probably compromised.”

“We’ll find somewhere,” Root says with her usual unshakeable certainty. “I’ve got a car, so we can even get as far out of town as you need.”

Shaw chuckles. “Let’s pick somewhere in the city. I’m so fucking sick of driving.”

 

Root is silent as she drives. Shaw tries not to watch her too closely, but her gaze keeps flicking back to her; she can feel the thousand questions that Root is holding herself back from asking, and she’s tense in the way Shaw knows means that she’s suppressing her worry. She hasn’t flirted at all yet — another thing Samaritan fucked up.

“I killed Lambert,” she says, trying to show Root that she’s willing to talk.

Root’s eyes light up, and she throws Shaw a grin. “Really? I killed Martine!”

She laughs at that — really, truly laughs, for the first time in eight months. “Fuck, Samaritan had better watch out.”

They stop outside another sketchy hotel. Shaw glares at it from the car, then gets out and heads inside, Root a pace behind her. The details of the inside are different from the last hotel, but the atmosphere is the same; she glances around for cameras and, finding none, grunts, “This is fine.”

Root squeezes her shoulder and walks up to the counter. Shaw quickly loses track of the conversation; the drive was long enough that the adrenaline has worn off, and she could almost fall asleep where she stands.

It’s all too much to take in. Escaping, The Machine helping her get back, running into Root… she needs to sleep before she can even begin to think about it.

“Got a room,” Root says, bringing her back to the present. She nods and follows Root up the stairs. It’s two flights this time, and when Root opens the door she sees that the room is much nicer — not like that would be difficult. This one has a small table with chairs, a TV, and a distinct lack of water stains. Root stops to look in the fridge and Shaw traipses right past her, dropping into a chair at the small table.

“Here,” Root says, putting a bottle of water on the table as she joins her. Shaw grabs it and takes a long drink. She hadn’t realised how thirsty she was until now. Root just watches her like she still can’t believe this is happening.

She sets the bottle back on the table, and they fall into silence. What do you even say to someone who thought you were dead? 

“‘Spose you want to know how I got out?”

Root stiffens. “I… I don’t want you to think you have to tell me.”

“I know.” She smiles a little. “But I don’t mind, and you’re so highly strung that you look like you’re gonna have an aneurysm.”

“If you’re sure,” Root cautions.

“Yes.”

Root visibly relaxes. Smiling, she gestures to Shaw. “In that case I would love to hear it.”

“Well,” Shaw begins, “I woke up, and there was something poking me in the chest...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading -- and remember there's an epilogue! It's a separate work because it more or less stands alone :)


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